


Flowers For A Ghost

by mango22



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, flower shop au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-07 19:23:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4275096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mango22/pseuds/mango22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sees her again at a flower shop of all places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So a flower shop AU was something I wanted to do for a while cause flowers have always been a part of mergana and one of the things I adored about them in canon. So here I am!
> 
> Special thanks to my beta MissFiyerabaMeponineWholock for all her help!

**XXXXXXXXXX**

_'Today is the day'_ , he decides as he stands outside the flower shop.

Merlin saw her two weeks ago, in this small store, chatting animatedly with a young girl about how beautiful the new cherry blossoms were. She looked as lovely as ever in her long, sleeveless yellow dress. With her hair pushed to one side, he could see the several piercings on her right ear.

He thought he was hallucinating at first. It wasn't all that unusual. Some days only a flash of golden hair, or a shy laugh, was enough to convince him his friends were back. He saw them everywhere in everyone.

But upon blinking several times and failing to make her disappear, he realized that this time the person standing before him wasn't a figment of his overactive imagination; and when she had turned and caught his eye, he fled.

It took him another four days to pluck up the courage to go back again. By then he convinced himself that he was wrong and it was someone else and that was the only reason he was going back; though a nagging voice in the back of his mind said it was the complete opposite.

The second time he managed to hold her gaze for a few moments but when she raised that perfectly arched eyebrow with a cocky smile on her face, he bailed once more. He could hear her tinkling laughter as he rushed out the doors.

And now he's here again. _Third time's the charm,_ he thinks as he takes a deep breath. The little purple wind chimes jingle as he opens the door.

It's closing time. The last customer hands her the money and walks away with his bouquet of red roses for his loved one probably. Once he's gone, Morgana looks up to meet his gaze.

It's eerily quiet. To him it feels like they're not even breathing, the dying ring of the wind chimes is the only sound in the room.

She breaks the silence first. "Are you finally going to buy something today? Or will you just stare intensely at me for a few seconds and then leave?"

Her tone is light and her posture relaxed. Merlin doesn't understand how she can be so calm. Does she not know who he is? He decides to play along.

"I'll take the lilies please." he says as he grabs the nearest bunch and walks up to the register.

They're too close now and her green eyes twinkle with secrets he wishes he were a part of.

"For a girlfriend or a wife?" she asks as she ties them up with a nice little bow. He's distracted by her profile.

"For a blind date." he answers truthfully.

She looks even more interested now. "Oh! Good luck then. I hope you meet your one true love tonight." He can't tell if she's mocking him.

"What's your name?"

She tilts her head. "Morgana." she replies boldly.

His heart skips a beat.

"Yours?" she questions as she hands him his flowers.

He takes them, fingers brushing hers ever so slightly. "Merlin."

Her smile never falters. "Well it was very nice to meet you Merlin."

"Likewise." he says in return. Flustered and confused, he leaves the shop with more questions than he came in with.

**XXXXXXXXX**

His date is going terribly and it's all his fault. The woman sitting across him is very nice and trying her best, like anyone would on a blind date; but for the life of him he can't concentrate on her. Another face keeps flashing before his eyes, and soon he decides to give up.

He feels really bad and apologizes profusely at the end of the evening, leaving her standing on the sidewalk with the lilies gripped tightly in her hands.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

Merlin dreams of roses and thorns and vines strangling him that night. He wakes up drenched in sweat and rubs his eyes to wash away the horrific images. He hasn't had a nightmare in decades.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

He's back at the shop the next day. It's buzzing with people and she's very busy, occupied with one task or another. Merlin doesn't mind, he's content to roam around and smell all the beautiful flowers, occasionally looking up to steal glances at her.

When she finally has a minute he goes up to say hi. Morgana doesn't inquire about his date, but he tells her anyway.

She shakes her head. "It could've been worse. At least she got out alive."

Ignoring the jab, he points toward a peculiarly shaped white flower that almost resembled a bird. "What are those called?"

Before she can answer a co-worker calls her name and she's pulled away.

"Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you all you want to know and more!" she says over her shoulder.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

She teaches him all the different meanings and symbolism of the flowers. Tulips for gratitude, daisies for hope and resistance, laurels for victory and poppies for remembrance.

"I thought forget-me-nots would be for remembrance."

"Yes, but they also represent eternal love, and as the name suggests, the hope to be never forgotten and kept in one's memory for all your life. A bit too cliché for me. Whereas poppies are more... _think of me when I'm gone."_

He nods thoughtfully and watches her as she ties up her hair in a ponytail, revealing all six of her piercings.

She notices him looking and says, "One for each person who has ever betrayed me. A constant reminder to never trust so easily again."

In his head he does the counting but they don't quite add up. "You know you're pretty morbid for someone who's surrounded by so much warmth and beauty."

Morgana shrugs. "Appearances can be deceiving."

**XXXXXXXXXX**

Everybody knows his name by now. He's become a regular visitor and her co-workers have even started teasing her about him. She brushes them off, but can't really come up with a reply when they ask her, _"So why do you spend every break hour sitting outside huddled together talking about God knows what with him?"_

Honestly, she doesn't know. The logical part of her brain tells her she should shut him out- like he did to her so long ago-instead of welcoming him back into her life.

But she can't deny that they're drawn to one another, like they always have been. They don't talk about the past, preferring to pretend it never happened. However she can't help dropping little nasty references here and there, which he always graciously ignores.

She hopes one day he'll take the bait though, because sometimes just looking at him makes her want to explode with all the unsaid things between them. He wonders how she can be so calm, but in truth it's just a mask. Inside her rages a storm as tumultuous as his own.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

"You brought me flowers? Gee how original." her voice drips with sarcasm.

Merlin tuts. "Not just any flowers, yellow daffodils."

She gets it. "Oh, daffodils. New beginnings."

"I thought you would appreciate the gesture."

Morgana says nothing as she takes the flowers and places them in an empty vase behind her. She does appreciate it, more than she would like to admit.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

Late one night when everyone's gone and they're still sitting on the floor talking when they should've left hours ago, Merlin suddenly leans forward and kisses her. Her lips are softer than he had imagined and they open up readily without any resistance.

But when he moves back to look at her face, there's anger in her eyes.

"A little too soon?" he asks tentatively.

"A little too late." Morgana isn't angry he kissed her, she's angry he didn't do it a millennium ago when the time was right.

"Better late than never."

She can't argue with that.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

Merlin wakes up with his arms wrapped around her. He presses his face against her neck and inhales. She smells like lavenders and freesias and gardenias and everything else he loves.

Her eyes flutter open when he begins to trail kisses down her spine.

"Good morning." he murmurs against her skin.

"Is it?"

He grins. " _Oh_ , don't be like that."

**XXXXXXXXXX**

She's gone. The other florists tell him she quit this morning, said goodbye and left. No number to call, no address they can provide him with. No mark she left behind.

Except he can still feel her head on his chest. He wants to laugh and cry at the same time. How did he not see this coming?

Of course Morgana would run. Just when he thought that perhaps they were ready to move on, together, she proves to him that she can't. Nothing forgotten, nothing forgiven.

Merlin walks around the city the whole day, he can't go back to his apartment now. Back to the emptiness, to her hair on his pillows, to that stupid smell of flowers suffocating him.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

He stumbles in during the wee hours of the morning. Bone tired and with a terrible headache, all he wants to do is climb into bed and forget everything. When he flips on the lights though, he sees that it would not be so easy.

There's a small cluster of poppies sitting on his mattress. The contrast between the red and the white is quite stunning.

He picks them up and reads the tiny note attached. Two words. In her lovely cursive handwriting.

_For Remembrance._

**XXXXXXXXXX**

 


	2. We Can Give It Time

_**~ But if stars shouldn't shine  
By the very first time,** _

_**Then dear it's fine...** _

"So fiiine, byyyy, meee." he sings along and she almost falls off the park bench.

Morgana whips around and sees him standing there with an infuriating smile on his face.

"I didn't know you could sing."

"There's so many things you still don't know about me."

_Maybe I'd like to keep it that way,_ she thinks; but instead of voicing her thoughts, Morgana asks, "How did you find me?" The answer is pretty obvious.

But he still does a little demonstration for her. Pulling his palm out of his jeans pocket, he creates a sparkling rose snowflake and makes it fly around on a hot July night. Eventually it falls by her feet and melts into the soft grass.

She smirks. "So what, now you can sing _and_ you're Elsa too?"

"Would you like to hear my rendition of 'Let It Go'?" he begins earnestly, but she stops him with one _'please, spare me'_ look.

He puts his hands up in surrender and then moves to sit beside her on the large bench, making sure to keep some distance between them lest she runs away once more like a startled deer.

But Morgana doesn't mind. She taps on her screen to lower the volume, and then turns to face him. "I thought you'd be angry."

"Initially I was. Mostly at myself."

"At yourself? For?" She's not used to him owning up to his mistakes. _Well except for that one time near the very end, but she prefers not to dwell on that._

"For being stupid enough to think we'd actually have a chance after all that happened between us."

"Yet here you are." She looks up at the pitch black, starless sky. "Ever the optimist."

"It's a disease." he informs her wryly.

"Then I sincerely hope it's not contagious." she says as she turns the music up, not in the mood for talking anymore.

They sit and listen to Morgana's favorite obscure bands. Merlin hums along to songs he's never heard before. She tries to tune him out, but it's not working. Not when it feels like there's an anvil sitting on her chest that can only be removed by him.

"For as long as I can remember, I've always known about my past. Being born with these memories is not pleasant. Neither is having sudden, violent flashbacks in the middle of World Literature class or a high school dance. And then there's the mark you gave me. They thought it was a birthmark, as if that isn't the most foolish thing I've heard in my life." She rolls her eyes. "But, then again, what other explanation could you conjure up for a newborn having a perfect jagged line placed conveniently down her stomach? God's art, my parents used to say. "

It's dark, and he really shouldn't be able to see it, but he does, astonishingly clear. When she pulls up her t-shirt and shows him the nasty scar on her abdomen.

His confusion is apparent, so she explains. "I covered it up the night we were together, after twenty five years I've become quite the expert at hiding the ugly parts of my previous life. Both internal and external."

"I'm sorry." He doesn't know what else to say.

Morgana goes on like she didn't hear him. "It served as a nice little reminder; every time I saw it, I was taken back to our last encounter. Some days I would spend hours sitting in front of the mirror staring at it, tracing my fingers over the puckered skin, imagining how much I would love to give you a similar wound, or something far worse, if I ever got the chance."

She looks back at him. "Clearly things didn't go as planned. When I first saw you at my shop, I felt your power immediately. I knew there was no way I could physically harm you, especially when I had no magic of my own. But then I thought: so what? Why not hit him where it'll hurt more?" She reaches over and gently taps his heart.

"It was far too easy; I was surprised by how readily you went along with my little game of not pretending to know one another. I didn't get it at first, but slowly I understood. The poor, centuries' old warlock was starved for company. Even if that company was no one other than the _witch_ who destroyed everything."

Her mocking tone falls away with the last part. "Sadly, it turns out the witch heavily underestimated how much the warlock meant to her."

Morgana stares at her palm, still resting on his chest, and he puts his hand over hers. "Is that why you ran away? Because you cared too much instead of too little? And here I thought it was the latter."

She entwines their fingers together. "I wish."

Merlin pulls her closer and wraps his arms around her. She shrivels under his touch, feeling small and stupid and... safe.

Her lips part in a soft gasp when she feels his free hand slide under her clothes and press down on her scar. An icy sensation takes over and it's like she's burning up and cooling down at the same time. She looks down. It's gone. He's erased that piece of their past she's been carrying for so long.

"If only healing our inner scars were as simple. Truth be told, I don't know how to fix the colossal mess that we are, but I know that I'm willing to try because it's been months and I've tried my hardest to let you go, but the problem is that I can't. Morgana, I can't give up on us. I want to use this second chance."

His unspoken question of _"Do you?"_ hangs in the air between them.

There's so many reasons for her to say no and turn away; but she crosses them off one by one in her head until she reaches the one reason for her to say yes.

She doesn't answer so much in words, but simply pulls him down in a searing kiss, pouring all her old sorrow and hope for new joy in it. He does the same.

Flowers bloom on the tree above them and a thousand twinkling stars suddenly light up the obsidian sky.

Morgana looks around in wonder once they break apart. All she's ever known was the dark side of Emrys' power, this was her first time witnessing the beauty of Merlin's magic.

"And it's all for you." he says as he holds her against his chest. "It'll only ever be for you."

_**~ Cause we can give it time, so much time, with me. ~** _

**XXXXXXXXXX**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the happy ending!
> 
> Hope ya'll liked it, and if you want you can check out the song, my entire inspiration for the second part came from it tbh, it's such a perfect mergana reincarnation song for me!
> 
> (Stars by The XX)


End file.
